A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

E-text prepared by Jeanette Hayward and Al Haines. Dedicated to the memory
of James Hayward.
Author of A Suburban Pastoral , The Ways of Vale , etc.
Was unsterblich im Gesang soll leben Muss im Leben untergehen. —Schiller
Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to set off a period, or a division of their subject, and entitle it Romanticism or the Romantic School. Writers of English literary history, while recognizing the importance of England's share in this great movement in European letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in the arrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as a tendency present in the work of individual authors; and have maintained a simple chronological division of eras into the Georgian, , the Victorian, etc. The reason of this is perhaps to be found in the fact that, although Romanticism began earlier in England than on the Continent and lent quite as much as it borrowed in the international exchange of literary commodities, the native movement was more gradual and scattered. It never reached so compact a shape, or came so definitely to a head, as in Germany or France. There never was precisely a romantic school or an all-pervading romantic fashion in England.
There is, therefore, nothing in English corresponding to Heine's fascinating sketch Die Romantische Schule, or to Théophile Gautier's almost equally fascinating and far more sympathetic Histoire du Romantisme. If we can imagine a composite personality of Byron and De Quincey, putting on record his half affectionate and half satirical reminiscences of the contemporary literary movement, we might have something nearly equivalent. For Byron, like Heine, was a repentant romanticist, with radical notions under his cap, and a critical theory at odds with his practice; while De Quincey was an early disciple of Wordsworth and Coleridge,—as Gautier was of Victor Hugo,—and at the same time a clever and slightly mischievous sketcher of personal traits.